Fine Dining: La Société Bistro

Lesley Chesterman, Gazette fine-dining critic10.04.2013

The dining room at La Société Bistro in the Loews Hotel Vogue has that faux bistro look down to a T.Allen McInnis
/ Montreal Gazette

Top, the steak/frites came with a basket of lukewarm fries; the plate of oysters, top right, was the best dish of the night; bottom right, the bone marrow with crab appetizer was quite good, but where was the marrow?Allen McInnis
/ Montreal Gazette

he plate of oysters at La Société Bistro in the Loews Hotel Vogue in Montreal on Thursday September 5, 2013.Allen McInnis
/ Montreal Gazette

The dining room at La Société Bistro in the Loews Hotel Vogue in Montreal on Thursday September 5, 2013.Allen McInnis
/ Montreal Gazette

The bone marrow with crab appetizer at La Société Bistro in the Loews Hotel Vogue in Montreal on Thursday September 5, 2013.Allen McInnis
/ Montreal Gazette

The steak/frites at La Société Bistro in the Loews Hotel Vogue in Montreal on Thursday September 5, 2013.Allen McInnis
/ Montreal Gazette

For the past few years, rumours had been swirling about who would take over the restaurant space in the Loews Hotel Vogue. Big names were courted: Carlos Ferreira, Normand Laprise. The Joe Beef guys were asked as well. Even Las Vegas chef Kerry Simon jetted in to have a look.

The first chef to cook at the Vogue at the time of the hotel opening in 1991 was Le Devoir food writer and former chef Philippe Mollé. After Mollé’s departure, the hotel dining room changed hands often. I remember it as Les Quatre Saisons, then Chez Georges. Last I looked, it was an Italian restaurant called Cellinis. Then for about a year, it sat empty while the luxurious hotel continued to rank highly with visitors. Montreal hotels generally don’t give good restaurant, but considering the Vogue’s location right in the heart of the downtown core, it seemed a waste not to fill the space, especially considering the captive audience of tourists and biz types who are happy to dine in their hotel resto before hitting the sack.

In mid-June came the news that the Loews Hotel Vogue restaurant space would be taken over by La Société Bistro. The original Société Bistro is located in Toronto and has been going strong for two years. I’ve read some take-downs of the food, but generally the restaurant is lauded as a great place to eat drink and party — especially during TIFF time. Owned by the CEO of INK Entertainment, Charles Khabouth (the biggest individual restaurant and nightclub owner in Toronto), La Société Bistro is a T-dot import, a first, I believe, in our city. Montreal-to-Toronto restaurant projects haven’t been that successful, and it doesn’t appear that the reverse situation is any more promising. To be blunt: My meal at La Société Bistro was one of the most amateurish I have experienced in 15 years of restaurant reviewing.

What went wrong? Everything. Starting with my two calls to the restaurant to book a table. Despite my pleading messages, I’m still waiting for a call back. Does anyone work the phones here? I ended up booking a table through the concierge of the hotel. When I mentioned the reservation problem she said, “That’s really not our responsibility. The restaurant is a separate entity from the hotel.” Oh, okay, then. Next time, I’ll use the Open Table feature on the website that doesn’t require contact with a human being. And if all else fails … smoke signals?

Upon arrival, I stood in the entranceway and gawked. This is one beautiful space. No expense has been spared. La Société Bistro has been given the Disneyland bistro treatment complete with a stained-glass ceiling, zinc bar, marble-topped service stations, wooden tables and chairs, and the most gorgeous black-and-white tiled floor I’ve seen outside of Paris. Like New York’s Balthazar, Société Bistro has that faux bistro look down to a T, save for the fact that everything here shines just a bit too much. And yet, despite the huge effort made to make this place look authentic, the background Buddha Bar-like tunes ram a stick in the spokes of the overall effect. If you’re going to recreate a bistro, play Aznavour, Gainsbourg or Trenet, not loungy muzak.

Only a few tables were occupied, and when the hostess showed us to ours (next to a noisy group), I requested another a few feet away. She hesitated then asked me to wait while she asked the manager if it was okay. Really? She then pointed the three of us to a table for six. What?

Once seated, we scanned the offerings. True to form, the menu has been given the same faux bistro look, complete with the requisite curlicues, olde-worlde sketches and a stamp that reads — in English — “Warranted of Superior Quality.” Trust me, that means nothing.

The menu itself is all over the place. Main courses are mixed in with starters, and dishes are listed over three pages for no apparent reason. When I ask the waiter if the dishes listed at the top of the main courses (mousse de foie gras, garlic snails, seafood ceviche etc.) are appetizers, he says, no, they are all main courses. Even the foie gras mousse? “Yes,” he says, “it’s very big.” The waiter seems clueless, so much so that 10 minutes after selecting our wine, he returns to the table and asks, “Could you tell me again what wine you ordered.” Groan …

After a 45-minute wait in a close-to-empty restaurant, the appetizers appeared. Hooray! First up, a dozen oysters that happily were both fresh and well-shucked. They didn’t make them, but still it was the best dish of the night. A bowl of onion soup looked promising, yet the beef stock was bitter and dull. The croutons inside tasted stale and the cheese lacked the punch of the promised Gruyère.

I was optimistic about my pretty marrow bone and crab starter. Served in a hollowed-out half marrow bone, the dish was quite good, yet where was the marrow? My guess was that it was minced and folded into crab mix, robbing it of all its unctuousness. Instead, I concentrated on the accompanying salad, which was tart and crunchy and filled with cabbage. I didn’t dislike the dish, but did it live up to its $19 price tag? No.

Prices at La Société Bistro are high when compared with Montreal’s top bistros such as L’Express and Leméac. Served in an attractive Staub pot (the tableware here is gorgeous), a spindly duck confit leg served on a tiny portion of Puy lentils with a few cherries is sold for $32. Even $22 would be a lot for this. The steak/frites consists of an entrecôte of aged beef topped with maitre d’hôtel butter. The steak was good, but with nothing but a basket of lukewarm fries as accompaniment, the $32 price is also excessive. Our last main course consisted of braised veal cheeks with smoked quinoa and the exact same spring slaw served with my crab appetizer. The cheeks were mushy and fatty, the salad was all wrong for this dish (in French cuisine, hot and cold elements are rarely — if ever — served on the same plate). And the smoked quinoa? Just plain awful.

Though the waiter boasted that desserts were excellent and made by an in-house pastry chef, I was not impressed. The tarte Tatin was burned, the “Crispy chocolate pillow with salty caramelized ice cream” wasn’t in the least bit crisp, and the deconstructed lemon tart looked and tasted like a failed cooking-school project.

As for the service, it only got worse as the night progressed: waiters taking away my wine glass before I had finished, no one bringing bread, nonsensical wine recommendations, different waiters showing up at the table throughout the evening. The works. I will give a thumbs-up to the wine list, which is both extensive and fairly priced. Yet, what’s the use of a good wine list if the staff’s wine knowledge is lacking, as in plunking down a pre-poured $15 glass of Chablis without showing me the label?

You may think I’m coming down hard on this establishment, but when dinner for three comes in with tax and tip at $344, a certain level of professionalism is expected. La Société Bistro didn’t even come close.

And a final word about the restaurant’s concept. While scanning La Société Bistro’s website, I found a line of copy that states that a meal here is all about, “Trouver l’âme de Paris au coeur de Montréal.” (“Finding the soul of Paris in the heart of Montreal.”) Funny, all I found here was the Toronto version of a Paris bistro. And a poor one at that.

We already have a great bistro tradition in this city, and this restaurant does nothing to up the game. So I say to this soul-searching team: Perhaps in Toronto you need to replicate a Parisian ambience in your bistros to up the French quotient. But here in Montreal we already have the French bistro vibe down pat. So much so, in fact, that the last impression I’d hope a tourist comes away with after a meal in Montreal, is a night out in Paris.

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